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On Raccoons and Realityhttps://cattaillady.com/2017/09/14/on-raccoons-and-reality/
https://cattaillady.com/2017/09/14/on-raccoons-and-reality/#respondThu, 14 Sep 2017 13:18:35 +0000http://cattaillady.com/?p=1797]]>As you know, I have chickens. I have them for eggs, meat, entertainment, learning, and just a little dependence taken away from The Man. This spring I got more layers, turkeys, and some meat birds to expand my flock. For the layers, I got ones that lay cool egg colors. The meat birds were to see if I could butcher them myself.

Then the verb for my chicken keeping became had.

Here’s the thing — I could blame the raccoons. I could get angry or weepy and then go out and trap and shoot every last one of ’em. Technically that’s not legal until October, but I doubt any of the neighbors would complain. Then I could go out and trap and shoot all of their relatives that wander onto our property. Then I could trap and shoot all of their relatives that expand into my territory. It’s mine, after all (more or less), so I get to decide what’s allowed!

Or — I could look at it through the lens of reality. Despite their reputations and super-villain masks, raccoons are not evil. In fact, I suspect that they are thoroughly amoral like the rest of the natural world. They didn’t go after my birds because they wanted to hurt me or push my healing back or so they could cackle with malicious glee when I came out to see the death and destruction. They killed my birds because I left delicious, easy food that couldn’t fight back in non-raccoon-proof containers. Er, coops. That’s all. That’s reality.

I’ve been wrestling with an idea for a while and this situation helped me to define it. See, there’s the reality we’re sold and then there’s real reality. They aren’t the same.

Sold reality: Getting chickens is great for your health, encouraging exercise, fresh air, and laughter (have you ever seen a chicken run?). I’m taking business away from those awful factory farms and I’m doing my part to bring food knowledge back to The People. Maybe I can even start my own business with it. It’s happy and shiny and so Martha Stewarty!

Real reality: I accepted responsibility for animals that would find it difficult at best to survive in Maine without human intervention for a lot of reasons. Food and shelter from the elements were handled well. The massive amount of wildlife was ignored despite several warning shots. Also, egg businesses? They rarely so much as break even.

Now, I had a lot of excuses for not taking the threats more seriously. I may even have one or two legitimate reasons.

Raccoons and reality really don’t care.

This also extends far beyond fresh eggs and masked murdering bandits. This extends into every aspect of our lives, every decision we make.

My butt is dragging so hard on the way to work and I forgot to bring my mug to put coffee in. One plastic to-go cup won’t actually do any harm, right?

I am not going to end this post with how we all need to go vegan and minimalist and if we hold hands and sing Kumbaya loud enough it’ll all work out in the end. I don’t know how to fix this. What I do know is that if we don’t become aware of the clash between the realities and do something to bring them back in alignment, real reality will win. It will win with extreme prejudice. That’s how reality works.

I also know that the first time a raccoon tries to get through the fencing with my new electric charger attached, I’ll be thrilled to report what to do with BBQ coon.

]]>https://cattaillady.com/2017/09/14/on-raccoons-and-reality/feed/0cattailladyIMG_6927IMG_6924IMG_6939IMG_6936The Age of Plastichttps://cattaillady.com/2017/07/13/the-age-of-plastic/
https://cattaillady.com/2017/07/13/the-age-of-plastic/#commentsThu, 13 Jul 2017 02:01:38 +0000http://cattaillady.com/?p=929]]>Plastic, when you really look into it, is terrifying stuff. It is not biodegradable, it is only sort of recyclable, and it’s probably going to be what defines our layer of the geologic timetable.

I just finished reading The World Without Us by Alan Weisman. Fascinating, and somewhat terrifying, read. There are so many things that will rebound without the pressures that humans place on them, but there are other things that we have done that are irreversible. Between nuclear waste and plastic, though, I think plastic is the one that scares me more. I grew up not too far from a nuclear plant. Dad used to say that it was the right place to be. If it went up, we weren’t going to have to worry about the fallout. With nuclear energy, it’s not easy, but you can make sure that you aren’t using energy from it. Plastic really can’t be escaped in the modern world.

It is only a guess, of course, but they are guessing that it will take around 100,000 years for bacteria to learn how to eat plastic. However, that only works if the bacteria can get to it. If it’s far out in the ocean, or submerged in the ocean, or buried in a landfill, it’s a little tough to get to. Compare that to Chernobyl which could be semi-habitable again as early as 2135. Of course, properly disposed of nuclear waste lasts a little longer- weaponized plutonium would take around 250,000 years to no longer produce dangerous radiation.

We’ve all seen those ads of seagulls or turtles being choked by the rings from a six-pack. It’s sad, and true, that a whole lot of plastic- possibly most of it- ends up in the ocean and a lot of it kills the pretty animals. What they don’t use in ads, and is scarier if you think about it, is what happens to that six-pack holder when it starts to wear down into smaller pieces. Eventually wind and waves and sun will degrade the plastic until it’s turned into tiny pieces that krill mistake for plankton. What ocean creatures rely on krill? Almost everything, directly or indirectly. Krill ingesting the plastic gets it started at nearly the bottom of the food chain. Small fish will eat the krill, concentrating the dose. Medium fish will eat the small fish, concentrating it further. It goes on and on until tuna and sword fish are just packed with the stuff. It doesn’t make a sexy PSA, but it’s got to chalk up at least as many deaths as whole six-pack rings.

I also recently watched Addicted to Plastic, which brought up some more interesting points. We’ve all heard of BPA by now. Did you know that we’re also all contaminated with it? Getting rid of your BPA drinking bottles is good, but only to stop adding on to your current chemical load. Another interesting point was that nurdles, those little plastic things that become anything, have a nasty tendency to absorb pollution from their environment. They aren’t small enough for krill to eat, but lots of smaller fish do dine on them. The pollution they absorb is then passed on to the fish to be passed up the food chain. I bet tuna is sounding delicious right now . . .

]]>https://cattaillady.com/2017/07/13/the-age-of-plastic/feed/2cattailladyI Have Bees!https://cattaillady.com/2017/04/29/i-have-bees/
https://cattaillady.com/2017/04/29/i-have-bees/#respondSat, 29 Apr 2017 15:59:31 +0000http://cattaillady.com/?p=1712]]>A week ago I installed two packages of bees from Georgia. I think they’re Italians, but they’re some sort of well-behaved, as-domesticated-as-possible breed. Whatever they are, it was probably only about 55 degrees, though sunny, when I slammed the boxes on the ground and shook the stunned bees into the hive (that’s how you do it), and nobody was particularly threatening. I was a bit of a chicken about handling them, but I’ll get over it.

I left the queens in their cages hung on the back of the hive, but I did pull the corks two days later. I expect the workers have eaten through the candy stoppers by now and I’m hoping both of them will be laying by the next time I open up the hive. Technically you’re supposed to pull the cork the day you install the bees and then not touch anything for a week while they’re getting settled, but I’m just not that good at following directions!

I left each hive with a quart of 2:1 syrup (that’s two parts sugar to one part water) and a scattering of human-quality pollen all hidden under the second hive body to discourage robbing from each other and by other critters. I do plan to get to the point where feeding is a matter of final desperation, not a matter of course, but doing that with a box of bees is going to reduce your chances of a successful start. These girls have already been on a trailer being shipped up from Georgia stuffed in a box with other bees that are not their sisters and a queen that is neither their mother, nor is currently laying eggs. All of this is very stressful, and I need them to raise a whole new generation of bees before they die of old age and over work. That means supplementing them until we have more forage than a few hundred daffodils in flower.

I will be tracking my hives to see how they do which means they need designations. It seems logical to name my hives after queens, so I’m starting with Amina (from Zazzau) and Boudica (of the Icini). The plan is not to name the queen, but to name the bloodline. As long as the queen in the A hive can be traced to the Amina line it will retain that name. If the line fails, the hive will be renamed. In other words, they can requeen themselves or I can requeen them from a split off that hive and keep the designation. If they’re doing so poorly that I requeen the Amina hive from a Boudica split, the line is dead and I choose another name.

The one on the right is small cell foundation.

One of the things I’m tracking is the difference between standard foundation and small cell foundation. Since I have two sets of comparable bees that are not currently attached to any foundation, it seemed like an experiment was in order. Amina hive will be trying out the small cell while Boudica hive will be rocking the standard size. My interest in the foundation size has to do with the varroa mite that is causing havoc among American beekeepers as well as in other parts of the world. According to the conventional beekeepers, it’s pointless. According to the treatment-free beekeepers, they didn’t really have success in finding a balance with the mites until they were fully regressed to the smaller size.

My plan is to pursue treatment-free beekeeping to the best of my ability. You can find people vehemently for and vehemently against this in the beekeeping community. Bearing in mind that if you ask five beekeepers a question you’ll get at least six answers, I think that the final decision has to rest with the person or people managing each apiary whether it’s one hive or 1,000, as they will be the ones handling any fallout from it. My interest stems primarily from my concerns about the fragility of our current food system and my lack of interest in supporting the companies that I see as keeping it fragile. After all, Monsanto et al would go out of business in short order if we managed to remember how to feed ourselves without copious applications of chemicals and patented seeds. If I can work toward bees that can take care of themselves in the current, non-friendly environment, then I will be making one step toward a more stable food supply which is a step toward a more stable world.

]]>https://cattaillady.com/2017/04/29/i-have-bees/feed/0IMG_6876cattailladyIMG_6840IMG_6856IMG_6859IMG_6841IMG_6874IMG_6839IMG_6876Finding My Power: Day 500https://cattaillady.com/2017/03/10/finding-my-power-day-500/
https://cattaillady.com/2017/03/10/finding-my-power-day-500/#respondFri, 10 Mar 2017 02:41:38 +0000http://cattaillady.com/?p=1677]]>This is day 500 of my 1,000 Day Project. My jade plant and I aren’t exactly exploding with growth in our current habitat, but we’re working on it. I have a new job that lets me see my chickens while the sun’s up and the jade tree is putting out some new leaves. I think the jade plant is doing alright with her life goals, but mine need some tweaking.

When I started this project, I set some pretty big, poorly defined goals. In 1,000 days I would have a viable farm. After 500 I would have a life worth living. What does that even mean? I am in a better mental and emotional shape than I was 500 days ago, but I’m hardly living the dream. In fact, I feel like I’ve made more progress on the viable farm thing- 5 of my 8 birds are laying, my worms aren’t thriving, but they aren’t dead yet, and my turkeys were hits as the guests of honor at Thanksgiving and Christmas. I even have vague plans for increasing my flocks this spring and my beehives are sitting in my room waiting to be assembled. I’ve learned things, too- ducks get eaten when the coop ramp is too steep and ginger is really hard to grow when the house is kept at sweater temperature.

So why have I made more progress on the goal that’s further out and, from the outside at least, ought to be a harder goal? A life worth living? It’s all internal- easy! Just make up your mind and do it! Farming? Just the housing alone is giving me headaches and wallet cramps. The problem seems to be that to live the dream, one must first define said dream. It gets worse when one realizes the standard parameters used to deliniate such dreams don’t seem to quite fit, either. I don’t want a mansion, I don’t want to loll about on white sand beaches sipping overpriced daqueries. I don’t want a corner office or a Fendi bag. (Yes, I had to google Fendi to make sure it was a bag brand.) So what do I want?

I . . . don’t know.

I also don’t think I’m the only person in my general age range that has this problem.

I have leftover wisps and scraps of dreams I used to have, but none of them seem to fit any more. Is that because the dreams are wrong, or because I’ve contorted myself so hard to meet outside expectations that I no longer fit what’s right? For example- I have the ability to dress in a way that is totally suitable for and non-offensive to a conservative corporate office in Maryland, a dressage show, an organic farm in Colorado, a dancesport competition, a small-piece assembly job in Maine, or going out to a club. But now that I have a new job and a touch more cash to rebuild my own wardrobe- I have discovered that I have absolutely no idea what my style is. I no longer have the pieces, but I know the rules to pull off each of the above styles more or less successfully. But when I have the chance to put together something that makes me happy . . . I find myself slapping my own wrist over choices that I think others will think are wrong. How am I supposed to make major, against-the-grain, life-altering decisions when I can’t even muster the ovarios to wear the leopard-print blazer that I got for a song at Goodwill? It even looks good on me!

So the next 125 days will be all about me. Daring to wear that blazer. Chucking (donating) those shirts that are functional and make me cringe. Asking myself real questions and NOT editing the answers. I’m a “smart” person, so enjoying really dirty, physical pursuits is supposed to be “beneath” me. According to who? Do I believe it?I have spent an excess of time in politically and religiously conservative places. I’ve managed to shed some of the baggage they gave me, but how is this still defining me? Do I really want that pair of sleek black heels, or am I just trying to look “normal?”

This is not about pampering and cushy “me time.” This is not about self-absorbed navel-gazing to the exclusion of all else. If I do this right, a lot of the next 125 days have the potential to be quite uncomfortable. After all, do I really want to know how far I’ve wandered off my own path? It’s also not about self-flagellation for being swept up in the culture whether it meshed with me or not. It’s about figuring out what matters to me so I can go about rerouting my path back to the right fit rather than a convenient, conventional one.

I read this post a while ago, and it’s been rattling around in my head since then. What I’m after is the self knowledge work that is the equivalent to the self care of paying your bills. I’ve spent a lot of time and energy reading the books I know I like and daydreaming about one day I’ll get to . . . in order to protect myself. But in doing so I’ve shied away from the hard, uncomfortable, possibly painful work that would give me the ability to rather than avoid the things that chip away at who I am, to instead be able to let them roll off my back. I can keep making myself smaller, less offensive, and more fragile, or I can figure out who I am so when someone says “You’re this,” I can say yes or no with actual confidence.

]]>https://cattaillady.com/2017/03/10/finding-my-power-day-500/feed/0cattailladyIMG_6836Finding My Power: To Farm or Not To Farmhttps://cattaillady.com/2017/02/19/finding-my-power-to-farm-or-not-to-farm/
https://cattaillady.com/2017/02/19/finding-my-power-to-farm-or-not-to-farm/#respondSun, 19 Feb 2017 19:23:28 +0000http://cattaillady.com/?p=1674]]>This seems to be the perpetual question. On the one hand, if we don’t have farmers, we don’t have food. This should be pretty straight forward, right? On the other hand, it is difficult, verging on impossible to be a farmer and be able to afford to feed yourself. That should be a ridiculous statement, but it’s not.

In my blog about what it would take to gross $10,000, I only addressed the numbers generated from my interest in farming. This needs to be looked at from another angle, though. What are the numbers my current employment is generating and what are other possible income amounts broken down into the hours, weeks, and months they take to get to $10,000.

I am currently working at a temp job that I rather enjoy making $12 per hour. In Maine, I’m doing ok as a moderately skilled temp. To gross $10,000 I need to work 833.33 (call it 833) hours which is 20.825 (call it 21) weeks or 5 months. That’s a long time. It’s also not taking into account commuting time, gas, clothing requirements, or the fallout from not feeling like I’m contributing in any meaningful way to the world. Gas and commuting time are fairly easy to attach numbers to. I am commuting pretty much exactly an hour each way five days a week plus five 30-minute lunches, making my 40-hour week actually a 52.5-hour week. 40 hours times $12 per hour divided by 52.5 hours means that counting the commute and lunch, I’m being paid $9.14 for each hour the job is consuming. Gas is costing me about $38 per week and the vast bulk of it is for my commute. That means that 21 weeks of commuting costs me $798. At $9.14 per hour before taxes, that means about 87 hours are spent just paying for gas. That’s over 1.5 of my 52.5 hour weeks every 5 months are just paying for gas.

Let’s say I find a job with the same commuting and lunch time and cost, but I’m making $15 per hour for 40 hours. That’s 666.66 (call it 667) hours which is 16.675 (call it 17) weeks or 4 months. My actual time being used is still 52.5 hours per week, which means I’m actually being paid $11.43 per hour before taxes. 17 weeks of commuting at $38 per week is $646 or 56.5 hours. That’s just over a week every 4 months is to pay for gas.

Temping, like an increasing number of permanent jobs, does not offer insurance or any guarantee of hours. Unlike a permanent job, my temporary employer can send me home at lunch time and tell me not to come back for absolutely no reason other than they don’t need me. Poof- no more income. The staffing agency has it in their best interest to get me back to work as quickly as possible, but that might be days or weeks of unemployment. Have you ever tried to save an emergency fund on $12 per hour?

Farming also offers no insurance, no guarantees, and if you’re not careful, the potential to end up with no income and a pile of debt if it all falls apart. On the other hand, I will be using and learning skills that are actually useful in the real world. The world in which being able to feed yourself means knowing whether those berries are yummy or deadly. I have the potential to make my corner of the world healthier, cleaner, and better habitat for both my cultivated plants and animals and the local plants and animals that are using the same space. I can help to perpetuate skills, genes, and equipment that we will need when we realize that Agribusiness might not be working as well as advertised. Farming, particularly small-scale farming, demands a certain level of fitness that will keep me healthy long past the time when an office-bound body would fall apart. It has its own challenges for health, but at least you can often see them coming. I can build the business to embrace my strengths and interests and my income is limited only by my imagination and ability to manifest what I see.

Now comes the hard part. I have been told, am being told, will continue to be told that the responsible thing is to get a “real” job. I need to work on a skill set that employers are looking for. I need to invest time, energy, and possibly money in pursuing what society tells me is an acceptable, respectable, logical use of my time and energy resulting in a “fair” income. I will be paid what I am “worth.”

I was talking about this with a friend and he asked if I’d considered what I would regret not doing in 10 years. 10 years ago I was just settling into a job with a company that I had spent the previous couple of years building a resume to get into. It was a good, solid company. I knew people that loved working there. I was making more money than I had ever made before. I was studying hard to get the licensing to move up in the ranks exactly the way I was supposed to. I may have even had my first exam under my belt at that point. I was doing everything right.

I’m not saying I didn’t learn things from working there, but in the end, you learn things from walking face first into a wall, too. Just because everyone’s doing it and everyone’s saying you need to do it, doesn’t mean it’ll work. Not everyone can get through to Platform 9 ¾, and it turned out I’m one of the ones that can’t.

I can’t quit my job and start farming tomorrow. I do have access to land that I don’t have to pay for, which is more than most people in my situation can say. What I don’t have are a significant number of skills or the money for the infrastructure. 31 hives worth of materials (excluding bees) will cost me about $5,663- that’s 472 hours (12 weeks or 3 months) worth of work at $12 per hour before taxes and expenses. However, I can take the time I would spend looking for a “real” job, and the small amount of disposable income I do have and spend it on a small number of hives so that I can build the necessary skills. If things go well, the hives themselves may gradually generate the income needed to expand my operations. If things go badly, I won’t have spent more than I had and it could be chalked up to an educational expense.

I guess it wasn’t as much of a question as I thought.

]]>https://cattaillady.com/2017/02/19/finding-my-power-to-farm-or-not-to-farm/feed/0cattaillady$10,000https://cattaillady.com/2017/01/20/10000/
https://cattaillady.com/2017/01/20/10000/#commentsFri, 20 Jan 2017 17:12:49 +0000http://cattaillady.com/?p=1665]]>Money’s funny. One number can seem like so much or so little to the same person, depending on the circumstances around it. If I had to pay $10,000- wow, that’s a lot of money! Where would I come up with it? If I were to receive $10,000, it’s a lot of money up until I start paying bills. Then it goes mighty fast.

I was doing some end-of-year looking at my spending in 2016. I’ve been tracking it for most of the year to help me figure out where it all goes and why there’s never quite enough. The number $10,000 came about because it’s an annual budget of modest spending for one excluding rent, food, utilities, renters insurance, and internet. Just for giggles, I wondered what it would take to gross $10,000 from my farming ventures.

If you know anything about farming, then you are familiar with the fact that gross and net income are not the same and often very, very different.

Honey: 1,250# at $8 per #. That’s 31.25 hives (call it 31) harvesting an average of 40# per hive

Nucs (nucleus hives): 67 nucs at $150, but only 56 if I sell them for $180 each

Eggs: 20,000 or 1,666.66 (call it 1,667) dozen at $6 per dozen

It was just an experiment. Everyone knows farming has no security and little if any prosperity attached to it, but some of those numbers looked almost possible. I don’t have much information on the net income for each, but I could make some educated guesses.

For the eggs, with the numbers I’ve been collecting since I got my chicks in the spring, to gross $10,000 I’d be looking at a net of $-20,000 or thereabouts. Yes, that’s a negative. The housing is killing me. I’ll never make money off of the eggs, but eventually I would like to at least get them to pay for the eggs and old hens the family eats.

For the honey, I found a place where I can get a kit with two deeps and buy one medium super for about $173 per brand new hive (2016 prices). At $8 per pound of honey, that’s around 22 pounds per hive to pay off the woodenware. If I’m buying bees, that’s another $125 to $190 or 16 to 24 pounds. With average harvests in Maine in the 40 to 45# range, that means I should be able to pay off even a purchased hive with the first full harvest- which isn’t until the second summer/fall. If I am splitting my own bees and/or catching swarms, I can make a dent in paying off the bear fence in the first harvest, too. Looking at my 31 hives, they will cost $5,363 for the hives themselves, no bees, and $300 for the bear fence with a potential income of $9,920. (31*40*8) That leaves me with $4,257 to either purchase the bees or pay for my time to split hives and catch swarms.

Splitting hives will mean making at least some nucs for my own use, and I can certainly make more for sale. I’ve heard of available patterns for making nucs out of ½” plywood, about four per sheet. At $20 per sheet that’s about $5 for the box. I also need 5 frames and 5 foundations, a total of about $18. That makes the gear requirement around $23. Nucs are selling around here in the $150 to $190 range for local bees, more if the nuc was overwintered. As a newbie I’d probably start selling at the low end, meaning that after deducting the gear, each hive could net me about $127 less the cost of my time. If I manage to make 67 successful nucs to sell, minus $23 per nuc for the gear, I could have around $8,509 to pay for that time.

If I have 31 healthy, producing hives, making 67 nucs shouldn’t be that hard. If I can do both simultaneously, I could spend around $7,204 but gross about $19,970 to net around $12,766. Hm.

These numbers aren’t taking into account some very important information. It doesn’t include rent/lease/mortgage on the land I’m using. It doesn’t include taxes. It also doesn’t account for the hive bodies and nucs that I have to buy and/or build for the hives that are too weak to produce honey or split into nucs. It doesn’t have room for the farm up the way to spray their fields at just the wrong time of day with the wind blowing in just the wrong direction that wipes out most or all of my hives. It doesn’t take into account the time it will take me, a beginning beekeeper, to learn the skills necessary to take care of 31+ hives and build 67+ nucs.

The numbers are still very interesting.

]]>https://cattaillady.com/2017/01/20/10000/feed/2cattailladyFinding My Power: Which World?https://cattaillady.com/2017/01/16/finding-my-power-which-world/
https://cattaillady.com/2017/01/16/finding-my-power-which-world/#respondMon, 16 Jan 2017 01:57:45 +0000http://cattaillady.com/?p=1506]]>I was listening to two audio books that randomly ended up perfectly paired. They both dealt with the idea that to live the best, brightest, most awesome life we can, we need other people’s support to make it happen. How each of the authors went about getting that support is all the more important as we gear up for the 45th President of the United States.

The first presents a world in which one goes for the deal. Find out what the market is looking for and give it to them. Test market and don’t start production until you’re sure there’s an audience. Buy your components and advertising cheap and sell your final product for as much as the market will bear. What you can’t get off your plate by streamlining in the process, outsource to the lowest bidder. Then, the payoff. Everybody wants to travel the world, and the global south will let you get a whole lot of bang for the bucks you have coming in.

I think it has some useful ideas. There are ways to work the system to your advantage. I’m particularly fine with doing that to large companies. They can handle it. Our culture runs on money, and making it is a reasonable goal.

The second takes a much more relational look at things. You have your strengths and gifts, they have their strengths and gifts and between you, both sides can come out ahead. If you’re travelling the world, couch surf and in return offer something of yourself. Maybe it’s return surfing, maybe it’s art, maybe it’s an experience, but it’s something that’s yours to give. Make money with your gifts because we all have bills to pay, and always pay your debts. But the payoff is wrapped up in the relationships that you’re building as you share what you have and others share what they have, allowing you all to build richer lives.

This one’s hard. It requires a balance between knowing and believing in yourself and your gifts with the ability to be open to asking for and accepting help. You need to be able to connect with people in a trust that we don’t see very often at this point.

The world as it stands right now supports the first book. If you buy low, sell high, and get a deal, particularly if it makes you rich, then you win. The second is a lot harder, particularly if your interpersonal skills are less than awesome. For the first one, you will be rewarded superficially, but I’m not sure whether it offers true long-term richness. The second one offers the real deal, if you can buck the current culture long enough to develop the relationships.

Right now, it’s all about tweets and “making deals.” Its about making sure that everyone pays up and no one gets a free ride. If you can’t bootstrap yourself into a better position, then its your fault, not the fault of a culture that doesn’t care about you unless you’re rich.

The thing about bootstraps, though? You can’t lift yourself by your own. But you can lift your friends, and they can lift you in return.

Tim Ferriss vs Amanda Palmer

]]>https://cattaillady.com/2017/01/16/finding-my-power-which-world/feed/0cattailladyA Good Winter’s Dayhttps://cattaillady.com/2016/12/18/a-good-winters-day/
https://cattaillady.com/2016/12/18/a-good-winters-day/#respondSun, 18 Dec 2016 23:16:11 +0000http://cattaillady.com/?p=1592]]>I had intended to write a post about some books I’ve been listening to, but then life intervened. It’s been wicked cold the last few days and I got to handle the fallout from a decision I hadn’t thought through sufficiently earlier in the year. When you live in a place where winter is the dominant season but you fail to take that into account when choosing your chicks, frostbite is a probable result. Particularly when the night before the temperature was around -10 degrees F.

The white tips on her comb and the black skin is frostbite. The white spot in the middle I’m less sure of, but the comb does usually flop to that side. I brought her in the kitchen to thaw out the flesh before she spent the night in the garage which doesn’t dip below freezing.

The rest of the girls seem to be doing fine in their winter quarters. It’s a partition in our garden shed that doesn’t have a roof, aside from the metal shed roof, so I don’t have to worry about condensation, but I’m also really not holding much body heat. The feed and water are tucked under the ramp up to the exit window so I don’t lose too much ground space that way. The waterer has a heated base that gives off some heat, but the girls seem to prefer getting cozy on the roosts when it’s very cold.

My chicks are even so classy they have curtains! That bright light out through the window? That’d be snow. The curtains are so I can have the window open but maybe cut down on any breezes coming into the coop. Lucky for me, the only appropriately-sized curtains at the Salvation Army also let in light.

The next morning it’s confirmed that her comb isn’t going to get better. I slathered on a little coconut oil to help protect the rest of it before I took her back out again. I waited until the afternoon when the temperature was a solid +10 degrees F. A chicken can survive with frostbite, but it’s a painful condition and in this case could have been avoided with just a little thought on my part. At this point, I’ll be keeping the two Leghorns through this winter and next summer, since they are very good layers, but I think they’ll go to the butcher next fall.

I was also working on another project for my girls at the same time. Making suet cakes. Like a good Millennial aspiring farmer, I found instructions online. The connective tissue between the layers of fat is kind of weird, but the more you can pull out ahead of time, the better the melting process is supposed to go.

For a long, slow melting, what better way to do it than on the woodstove that we’re using to heat part of the house? It’s not a cook stove, so the top is warm enough to keep the tea water hot, but not so warm that it’ll burn my tallow.

All-in-all it was a pretty satisfying day. I did make a newbie mistake with my birds, but I’m handling it and I’m working on fixing it for next year. I am having a hard time finding cold-hardy breeds that lay white eggs, though. Do you know any? I’m also working on a new skill since rendering fat can be useful as the basis for all sorts of practical things including soap, fried food, and a warming supplement for the chickens for the next wicked cold snap.

Happy Holidays, and stay warm!

]]>https://cattaillady.com/2016/12/18/a-good-winters-day/feed/0cattailladyimg_6623img_6624img_6626img_6630img_6628img_6629img_6619Regaining My Power: Day 365https://cattaillady.com/2016/10/25/regaining-my-power-day-365/
https://cattaillady.com/2016/10/25/regaining-my-power-day-365/#respondTue, 25 Oct 2016 23:17:11 +0000http://cattaillady.com/?p=1570]]>Today is Day 365 on my 1,000 day challenge. It’s a really cool idea that you can change your life in 1,000 days (or less) but if you find out that you’ve changed it all in the wrong way? Well, write that one off and try again- it wasn’t that long, after all! It ends up being less than three years, all told.

My first 1,000 days was started on July 14, 2016. It was 1,000 Days to a Viable Farm. It didn’t work. There was no way I could believe in a viable farm when I was renting a room from someone who didn’t want me to dig holes in her yard and I didn’t have the income to support living anywhere else.

By October 15, 2016 (no, the math doesn’t work, but I’m rolling with it!) I was ready to do a reboot and actually log each day. I had managed to buy and move into an RV, and I had come to terms with the fact that life wasn’t working in Colorado and I needed to do something different. I also realized that a viable farm couldn’t be my first goal. The current challenge is actually a dual challenge: 500 Days to a Life Worth Living and 1,000 Days to a Functional Farm. After all, a farm can’t function if its farmer can’t manage to roll herself out of bed in the morning.

I have been almost completely consistent in noting each day, and I think that alone is helpful. The three things I’ve noted each day is whether I took my supplements (they have varied some), what I did for my job (“went” is a common entry), and my movement that day. Commentary has moved from evening to first thing in the morning for the sake of consistency. Currently the common theme is “I hate 5 am.”

The negative, because that’s always the first thing I see: I weigh more (five or nine pounds, depending on where you count from), I’m further in debt, I no longer have any idea when I can live on my own again, and I still don’t have a “real” job.

I weigh more because when things don’t go well, I gain weight. That “real” job that I thought I’d snagged when I got here? Very bad for my waistline. I am currently employed, more or less gainfully, as a temp, though, and it’s mostly covering the bills without driving me ’round the bend. The additional debt is because my car bit the dust in the last year. After 12 years of me as the owner, Io did deserve her rest, and she did wait to die until I was in a place that I had access to help and a reliable replacement car. She did well by me all the way until the end. As far as living on my own goes, that won’t happen until I have the kind of job that will support enough space that I can take my chickens with me. After, of course, I’ve made a dent in my debt with that income.

The positive, because I need to remember that it happens, too: I have chickens, I can think again more often than not, the food is really good here, I’m slowly thinking through the farm thing again, and I have a truck!

Ok, so the truck isn’t a “real” truck by my definition. There’s no way it could pull a horse trailer. On the other hand, it’s supposed to be darn near indestructible, and I need that in a vehicle. It also gave me a truck bed for hauling the turkeys I’d raised off to be butchered. Five of my hens are laying, and all six are healthy. This is all giving me numbers and actual experience to extrapolate from. Things like- make the coop bigger the first time! I’m currently reading and thinking through a book on farm finance. It’s actually quite interesting, now that I have the brain power to apply to it. As for the food, nothing beats garden veggies at every meal. Particularly when I don’t have to cook them!

After 365(ish) days, it’s a mixed bag. Maybe I would have done better if I’d set more concrete, measurable goals, maybe not. “A life worth living” is a very slippery thing to define, but I think it’s safe to say that I’m closer to yes on that than I was when I started. As for the functional farm? According to the book on farm finance I’m solvent! Just don’t ask to see the profit and loss statement . . .

]]>https://cattaillady.com/2016/10/25/regaining-my-power-day-365/feed/0cattailladyChicken Update!https://cattaillady.com/2016/10/23/chicken-update/
https://cattaillady.com/2016/10/23/chicken-update/#respondSun, 23 Oct 2016 00:13:37 +0000http://cattaillady.com/?p=1508]]>It’s been a while since I’ve updated you on my adorable little fluffballs. They are now somewhat less adorable, but still pretty entertaining, featherheads. This is a bit before I put them in their outside coop- two turkey poults and three chicks in that group.

I did not lose any birds in the early, fluffy days when it’s pretty easy to get them too hot, too cold, too crowded- too anything, really. I had read about this heating plan where instead of lights, you make a “hen” from a seedling heating pad, some sort of arch to hold it up, and towels so they don’t interact with it directly. It gives them a warm cave to retreat into, just like Mama’s wings would be, but without light that can mess up their clock. It worked for me!

Clearly, they also thought it was a good foot-warmer. I didn’t lose anybody until I put them in their coop outside. It was kind of early, but I was flat out of room in these containers and the little buggers were starting fly out when I opened it up to do anything. I shifted the seedling heaters into the nest boxes for a couple of weeks to give them a little extra heat, and it doesn’t appear to have caused any bad habits. No one died of chill or illness. However, the ducklings didn’t like the ramp so they chose to sleep outside. They were big enough to stay warm, but not too big to be pulled through a gap between the bottom of the fencing and the ground. It happened a couple of nights apart, and I only ended up finding one of the carcasses. The predator, still not sure what it was, had the same idea I did. I bet the ducks tasted good.

According to my notes, I picked everyone up on May 5. This is one of the two that didn’t match each other. I ordered Araucanas, but apparently you only get real, honest to goodness Araucanas or Amaraucanas from breeders. What you get from a big hatchery is a mutt that should have a blue-egg gene, but isn’t pure anything. So she’s one of my two Easter Eggers. You never know quite what you’re going to get. On August 28 I found three eggs- white, from a Leghorn, and they were expected to be the first ones to start.

The first eggs are always small- but check out that healthy orange yolk! The Leghorns have been fairly steady- and did somewhat redeem themselves when I found the 17 eggs one of them laid out in the yard. At least she was laying, even if she wasn’t sharing.

My first thought on seeing this was, “This is why I need a pig. I don’t need to know the egg age to give to a pig!” The next layer started on September 1- one of the Golden Comets with brown eggs. At first I was wondering if the two of them were tag-teaming perfectly since I was getting a brown egg every single day. Nope. The second one started laying on the 18th and they have both been absolute machines. I can pretty much always count on my two brown eggs. The two white layers are fairly consistent, but not like the browns. I didn’t get anything from an Easter Egger until October 8, but they are bigger than the other two and probably took longer to mature. Tragically, it’s a nice, medium, pinkish-beige. I’m still holding out hope that my last hen might decide to lay a green egg, but I’m not holding my breath at this point.

From my first egg until October 20, I have gotten an average of 3.17 eggs per day. However, if I count from when hen #5 started until the 20th, my average is 4.5 eggs per day or 5.25 eggs per hen, per week. Not bad, since one of them is a free-loader!

My third kind of poultry, of course, were the poults. Didn’t they grow up into a handsome couple! And a very large couple. After quickly outgrowing the chicken coop, as expected, I cobbled together their own cage with parts of the winter garden skeleton. They really outgrew that, too, but Mom was keeping them very well supplied with weeds and garden leftovers, so they were doing ok.

So ok, in fact, that the little one, Hen, weighed in at 22#. That’s her being “vacuum packed” before freezing. We had to scramble for something to pack them in since I did find someone to butcher them, but he didn’t have any bags that were big enough!

Tom, however, was so big that he broke the rope the butcher was using to hold him up for plucking. At a healthy 32#, we determined he’d never fit in the grill to live up to his other name- Thanksgiving. Dad dismembered him for me so he should thaw faster when it’s time to get him out of the freezer. Imagine how big they’d be if I figured out a month earlier that I was underfeeding them on protein . . .

At this point in the poultry experiment, I’ve gotten 180 eggs, 54# of meat/bones, and have had to deal with unintentional loss. I’m about to build coop number two for the winter, since the original chicken coop really isn’t big enough for six hens in a Maine winter. It will be cobbled together temporarily in the garden shed, so coops number three and four will be built next spring/summer. I’m glad I sent the turkeys out this year, but learning how to butcher them myself is still the plan. I also plan to expand the egg operation next year to sell some and I’m considering meat turkeys and/or chickens for the house and possibly for sale. I need to run the numbers. I might also start breeding on farm. Everyone who can really should help to keep heritage breeds around until the rest of America figures out that having one breed of cow, one breed of chicken, and one breed of pig is a poor idea. So far, this experiment is enough of a success to continue it for another year- provided I do a little more planning on the housing first!